Pakistan minister is killed

By

Zahid Hussain And

Tom Wright

Updated March 3, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

ISLAMABAD—Suspected Islamic militants shot dead the most senior Christian in Pakistan's national government, in the latest sign that political moderates backed by the U.S. are failing to rein in a growing wave of Islamist extremism.

The second killing this year of a politician who has stood against the blasphemy law, which sanctions the death penalty for insulting Islam, further destabilized a country where secular-minded politicians are increasingly imperiled by a rising strain of Islamism in the middle classes. The...